Shelled Out Shadows
by alexismaaze
Summary: This is a window into what's left.


So it goes.

He wakes up slowly. These days, he knows he has nowhere to be in a rush. He tosses in his sheets for a few minutes, then ten. Finally, he sighs and heaves himself out of bed. Already operating on the autopilot that has inconspicuously come to puppeteer his life, he shuffles towards the shower and grunts when he knocks his toothbrush off the sink and onto the tiles in his shoebox of a bathroom. He could have decided on someplace bigger, a place with more square footage and breathing room. His loft fit him, though. It felt like Manhattan, his home adjacent for so, so long. If he were to be honest, it was the borough he felt he most belonged. Fortunately for his day-to-day wellbeing, however, he no longer feels the tangible weight of honesty. He just picks up the toothbrush and steps under the water. Since moving out here, he's picked more than a few bad habits, and he knows brushing his teeth in the shower is one of them, albeit of the decidedly more innocuous variety. It saves him time, and as slow as he goes now, he latches onto these time-savers. Once or twice he wondered what Kathy would have said if he had tried that in their family home before running off to yet another hair-raising crime scene. But he long ago stopped having to try to push thoughts of her away, too.

His most often used mug is dirty enough that he dabs it with some dish soap and runs it under the water before he fills it. Upon first glance at the bottle nearest to the coffee pot, he quickly discerns that it's too far on this side of empty to last him until nighttime. Sighing at the thought of facing the kind-faced but stern-lipped Creole woman who runs the liquor store a few streets down, he palms under the sink blindly for a few moments until he feels it. Thank God he had the foresight to make good of the two for one sale she had run last weekend. As he stands up to pour the coffee into his whisky, he observes the twinge of guilt that passes through his body as he guesses people watch the behavior of another on the street. Really, that fits, because he shares about the same amount of detached interest and fleeting disappointment. He drinks as he dresses, and, somehow, he might actually be early for once. He finds his left dress shoe under the couch and his keys on the windowsill of the breakfast nook he's haphazardly turned into an office. Before walking through the door and locking the deadbolt, he sweeps the loft with his eyes for anything he may have forgotten. Satisfied, he makes his way to the staircase a few places down from his before he notices that he's more light with his steps than usual for a quarter to seven in the morning. He went a little heavy with the whisky this time, he realizes, in his excitement of finding its pair unopened and waiting for him come evening. So, he changes direction and swiftly punches the down button for the elevator. He doesn't admonish his lead hand nearly as much as he did two years ago, however. Just as he knows it will, the reprieve from reality sets in after about eight minutes of talk radio and sluggish traffic. He simply exists then. He breathes a little deeper and lets that ubiquitous ghost of a traffic companion sink into his passenger seat. Elliot never gives the illusion too  
much; he doesn't talk to the shadowed chair, and he supposes he should take it as a good sign that she doesn't say anything to him either.

He lets himself feel whole for all of ten minutes before he turns the car off in the spot he has long claimed as his in the parking garage across the street from his office building. He assures himself that he really is present for his co-workers' greetings and drivels of small talk that bookend his work day, but isn't in the least surprised that he doesn't remember a damn bit of it or the telephone conferences, spreadsheets, and intradepartmental e-mails when he treks to his quiet car not too long after six in the evening. He grits his teeth an hour later when his enters his living room. As usual, the dull ache he wakes with has become a persistent stab by now. As usual, he returns it in kind with one part dinner to three parts spirit. But the freedom in drink from this morning is gone. The emptiness taunts him now, and he can't help but feel angry at its persistence. He should call his kids. Kathleen is the least of his children to question his distance and the quickest to understand that picking up the phone requires effort and energy that he knows none of which possesses him tonight. He never bothered to turn on the television when he came in, so he shuffles to the bedroom after tossing the day old takeout containers and checking the timer on his coffee pot. His diligence with his drink helps him to sleep, but it only heightens the loneliness and shame he's come to accept as his norm. He bares the waves of it with an occasional sigh until the sunlight is too bothersome to continue to ignore. He wakes slowly.

So it goes.


End file.
